


A Great Blessing

by Em Tee (sultrybutdamaged)



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Celebrations, Found Family, Gaang (Avatar) as Family, Gen, Holidays, Minor Aang/Katara, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:20:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28078344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sultrybutdamaged/pseuds/Em%20Tee
Summary: Aang knows his friends are keeping a secret.Aang's friends are really, really bad at secrets.
Relationships: Aang & The Gaang (Avatar)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 46
Collections: ATLA Winter Solstice 2020





	A Great Blessing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MashpotatoeQueen5](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MashpotatoeQueen5/gifts).



> This is my entry for the ATLA Winter Solstice Exchange. My gift recipient requested the Gaang as a found family supporting each other. I hope this meets your expectations!
> 
> The title is from a line by the always-quotable Iroh, "While it is always best to believe in oneself, a little help from others can be a great blessing."
> 
> Beta by [thoughtsappear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thoughtsappear/pseuds/thoughtsappear), like always.

Aang couldn’t find any of his friends.

Maybe that wasn’t so surprising, since there were only nine of them - counting Appa, which Aang always did - living in a temple that at the height of Air Nomad culture had housed thousands, but he didn’t like it. Since they’d arrived, the group had spent most of their time exploring, running up and down the staircases and shouting out their discoveries, and Aang preferred that to silence. When he was around his friends, it was easy to think of this place as just another interesting historic ruin to search for secret hideouts and play hide-and-seek in if he could convince the others to join him. It reminded him a little of what Zuko had thought the Sun Warriors’ city was, before they’d discovered that it had people living in it.

That thought was disquieting.

When he was alone, it got harder to pretend the Western Air Temple was just the setting for another adventure. Aang had never spent much time here, a-year-and-also-a-century-ago, because the Western Air Temple had been home to nuns only, but he’d visited a few times, and the senior nuns had sometimes come south. He couldn’t say for sure, but he thought he recognized a few of their faces carved into the niches that decorated the halls of this temple. And this temple, upside down even as it was, had the same feel as the others. It was easy, walking through its deserted halls or gliding along in the canyon just beyond the courtyards, to imagine the sound of voices raised in familiar debates, the song of the Dungchen calling them to meditate, the murmur of monks over the Pai Sho table and the roar of sky bisons in the obstacle course. If he closed his eyes, he could forget that the only bison here was Appa, that the obstacle course had been turned into a practice area for the Earthbenders, and that the voices he heard were just memories.

Aang needed his friends to stay firmly rooted in _now_ , but that was hard to do when he couldn’t find them.

“Where do you think everyone disappeared to, Momo?” he asked, scratching at the lemur perched on his shoulder. Momo gave a series of chirps and rubbed affectionately against his ear; sweet, but not really helpful. 

He turned down another one of the winding corridors moving deeper into the side of the canyon wall. He didn’t think anyone had explored this far yet, but it was worth checking. The corridor curved in a circle, moving inward into the mountain; most of the light came from slits carved in the walls, but after a while he also found lit torches that suggested someone had come this way. A few feet further down, he began to hear footsteps, eerily distorted by the tunnels and passage of air currents through the Temple, enough to make him wonder about ghosts - but then he reached the end of the hall and was nearly barreled over by Sokka, emerging from a side room with a pile of scrolls in his arms. 

Aang bent the air around them, catching himself with his feet off the ground to avoid knocking his friend down, and Sokka gave him a wide-eyed look.

“Aang, hey!” He shifted the stack of scrolls to one arm so he could scratch at his hair with the other hand. “What are you doing down here?”

“Looking for you. Any of you.”

“Huh. Well, you, uh, you found me.”

“I did.” Aang didn’t like to be suspicious of his friends, but Sokka looked a little panicky. “What are you doing?”

“Um…” Sokka’s eyes darted around the corridor. Definitely panicky. “I am - “

“What’s taking you so long?” Toph’s appearance was always accompanied by a faint tremor in the earth beneath Aang’s feet, like his Earthbending teacher couldn’t help bending the ground around her slightly as she walked. She stomped up to them from a staircase Aang hadn’t noticed, her hand on her hips. “You were supposed to meet me down in the kitchens and instead you left me with your sister and her _plans_ , and her bossy demands and whatever she’s doing with - “ Abruptly she cut herself off. “Hi, Twinkle-toes.”

“Hey,” Aang said. He glanced between his two friends. “Okay, what are you guys up to? Is it a prank?”

“What? No. Strategy.” Aang had learned - well, okay, Katara had told him - that if you wanted to catch Sokka in a fib, you had to do it fast. Aang had given him too much time to recover. “We’re planning out what we’d do if the Fire Nation caught us here. You know, defensive maneuvers, that kind of thing.” He shifted the scrolls again. “These are maps. Layouts of the Temple.”

“Neat! Can I see?” Aang made a grab for one of the scrolls, but Sokka stepped out of the way with that almost bender-like agility he occasionally displayed. 

“You’d just think they were boring,” he said.

“Yeah, and aren’t you supposed to be training with Zuko?” Toph asked. “He’s got to have more fire dances to teach you.”

“They’re forms,” Aang protested, because he was supposed to at this point in their banter, though actually he’d started feeling a lot better about Firebending now that he could think of it as dance steps. “And no. Zuko said he was supposed to go meet Katara for something.” That thought distracted him long enough that he didn’t catch Sokka and Toph until they were already slipping back down the stairs. “Hey, didn’t you say you were going to see Katara?” he called after them. “I should come with you. We probably don’t want to leave her and Zuko alone together. Just because she isn’t threatening to kill him anymore - ”

“We’ve got it,” Sokka called back over his shoulder. He looked like he was actually running down the stairs now, in danger of spilling those scrolls everywhere.

“Katara’s cooking,” Toph told him, “ _and_ she’s with Zuko. Do you really want to interrupt her around her two least favorite things? You know how she gets.”

Aang did know how she got. Last week Sokka had suggested maybe they find a way to vary up their diet of rice and more rice and she’d screeched something about “maybe you could learn to cook” and dumped an ice bath on his head.

“I guess I probably don’t want to interrupt that,” he admitted.

“Didn’t think so.” Toph darted down the stairs after Sokka. “See ya, Twinkle-Toes!”

Left alone, Aang looked around the empty hall. Momo shifted closer on his shoulder, wrapping spindly arms around his neck, and Aang rubbed his fur. “I know you’re still here,” he said. His voice echoed against the stone walls of the temple. “I was just kind of hoping to find someone who wanted to talk.”

***

As Sokka reminded the others, it wasn’t like they had _planned_ to keep a secret.

“Aang wasn’t here,” he said. “Were we supposed to wait for him and Zuko to come back from their little dragon dance party before we opened the door? Would Aang really expect any of us to be able to resist touching something marked ‘private’? _Us?_ ” As he said it, his fingers snaked towards the tray of sweets that Katara was rolling out.

His sister moved without looking up from her work, bending a stream of water up from the canister at her belt to slap his hand away. “No one expects you to resist touching anything you’re not supposed to, Sokka,” she grumbled. 

Sokka, who was used to interpreting his sister’s various levels of grumpiness, rated this one Bad Mood Type Two, _Katara Is Angry With Herself and Taking It Out On Everyone Else_ , and didn’t bother getting upset. You didn’t need to get worried until she hit Type Three, _Katara is Angry At Herself and Taking It Out on the Scenery_. That’s when floods happened.

“So it wasn’t our fault that we happened to find a secret library while he was gone.” He timed himself, waiting for the exact moment when his sister turned her back, then snatched one of the half-formed sweet rolls off the counter in front of her and popped it into his mouth, making a face at the salty tang. Katara’s baking was getting better, but it had started from nothing, from _grew up on an ice flow with no grains,_ so there was room for a _lot_ of improvement.

“It’s our fault that we haven’t told him since then, though,” Toph said unhelpfully. Sokka turned to glare at her where she sat perched on a bench across the room, bare feet swinging, toes just skimming the floor. “What?” she asked, because somehow Toph always knew when he was glaring, though he couldn’t figure how that got transmitted through her feet. “We totally could have told him. But it would have messed with your plan.”

“Her plan!” Sokka protested, pointing at his sister, just as Katara said, “He’s the ‘plans guy.’” They glared at each other, and then Sokka relented. 

“Our plan,” he admitted. “But it seemed like a good one.”

“Aang’s been so down lately,” Katara said. Her annoyed expression faded into something sadder. “I just wanted to cheer him up.”

“By lying to him?” 

They all jumped, even Toph. It wasn’t so much that any of them ever forgot Zuko was around, Sokka thought, as he was so quiet when he wasn’t going on about honor and being a good person that it was easy to treat him as a piece of the furniture. Which was not something he would have ever thought he’d say about the Fire Prince. 

“It’s a surprise!” Sokka protested. “You don’t tell people about surprises. That ruins the whole point. Didn’t anyone ever give you a surprise when you were a kid?”

“You’ve met my family.”

Fair point.

“It’s not lying.” If there was one thing guaranteed to make Katara feel comfortable about what she was doing, it was Zuko telling her she was wrong. Before he turned away, Sokka caught a faint smirk on the Fire Prince’s face that made him wonder if he’d done it on purpose. “Aang is sad because, well - “

“His whole family and everyone he knows is dead and now we’re camped out in what was, let’s be real, probably their gravesite?” Toph asked.

“That’s not how I would have put it.” Katara deflated. “Yes. But,” she added, perking back up. Sokka had always admired his sister’s ability to jump back to hope and optimism no matter what knocked her down, even if he kind of thought a lot of the time she was faking it. “We are his family now, and we are going to give him this one thing. Before - “

“- we all get killed by the Fire Nation?”

“Toph!” Katara sighed. “Before we all have to leave and we don’t get another opportunity.” She looked between them, half-entreating and half-threatening. “Agreed?”

“Sure,” Sokka said quickly.

“You got it,” Toph said.

“I’m in.”

They all jumped again, and Katara put on a stiff smile. “Thanks, Zuko.” She pushed aside her latest tray of failed baking and reached for one of the scrolls Sokka had dragged down here. “So, how are the plans coming?”

***

Haru had been able to provide one tiny piece of the mystery. 

“We started exploring while you were gone,” the Earthbender told him when Aang asked what was making Sokka and Toph so twitchy and Katara and Zuko so… not around. “I hope that’s alright. We didn’t mean to be disrespectful. It’s just easy, you know, as Earthbenders, to find rooms that have been hidden and, well. Open them.”

“Of course, but thank you for thinking of it,” Aang said. He liked Haru. The older boy was always thoughtful and considerate of everyone, and he got along with them all, even Zuko. If Aang would have been happier with one of his real friends, who were rarely polite about anything and would instead have told him all about the cool things they’d found, that was his problem, not Haru’s. “Did you find anything?” he asked.

“Oh, ah… the echo chamber? That’s pretty fun,” Haru said. “Teo and the Duke have been using it to make all kinds of echoes.” He looked like maybe those echoes were giving him a headache.

“Right, the echo chamber.” Which he knew they’d actually found the first week in the Temple. “Well, thanks for catching me up, Haru.”

“No problem, Aang.” Haru’s smile looked distinctly relieved as he rushed off without explanation.

It was something, anyway. His friends had made a discovery and they didn’t want him to know about it. But what could it be about?

Occasionally Aang wondered if his friends really trusted him. Oh, they trusted the kid who would have their backs if the Fire Nation attacked and could be counted on to have a fun animal-related sport to play on a moment’s notice, and they trusted the Avatar because they didn’t have much choice there. But ever since the Day of the Black Sun, Aang had caught them looking at him like they weren’t totally sure, like something about his total failure to kill or even find the Fire Lord left Toph and Sokka worried and Katara sad. Zuko - well, he looked at Aang with total faith and trust, but Aang didn’t feel that had much to do with him, personally. Zuko just saw Aang as a short-cut to his own redemption. That wasn’t any better. 

He sighed, wandering out into the courtyard that overlooked the canyon below, wondering if maybe Appa would like to go for a fly, and saw Sokka darting across to the hall leading down to the kitchens.

“Hey Aang!” Aang waited for Sokka to get that same look of awkward discomfort on his face and make an excuse to leave, or for Toph or Katara to pop up from nowhere and drag him away for a mysterious “strategy” session. Instead, the older boy paused. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Aang said glumly. “Just bored. I don’t suppose you know where anyone is, or want me to help with anything?”

Something a lot like guilt flashed through Sokka’s eyes. “Uh, no, nothing we need to be doing. Um…” He turned away, then turned back. “Do you want to see a boomerang trick?”

Sokka’s boomerang tricks were not usually tricks so much as just Sokka throwing his boomerang at various objects and cheering when it knocked them down and came back, but Aang’s mood brightened anyway. “Sure.”

“Okay.” He draped an arm over Aang’s shoulders. “Come here.” 

Sokka led him out to the edge of the courtyard where it spilled over into the chasm, and readied his boomerang. “Look up,” he said. Aang obediently tilted his head back, staring straight up above them at the cliff face. The Earthbenders all preferred to stay deeper in the Temple where the ground felt more solid beneath their feet and even Katara had admitted that the drop here made her feel dizzy, but Aang had always loved heights. Of course it probably helped that if he fell off the edge, he could fly. “Do you see that little spark of blue?”

Aang made himself concentrate on Sokka’s trick, squinting until he could see the bit of blue against all the brown and grey of the earth. “Sure.”

“Alright. Watch this.” Sokka’s boomerang whirred past Aang’s ear as he tossed it, and together they followed it with their eyes as it soared unerringly straight for the little blue item, sliced it cleanly free from the cliff, and fell back into Sokka’s waiting hand.

Sokka sheathed the boomerang with a milder version of his usual cheer and then held out his other hand in time for the little blue item to flutter down into it. “See?” he said, holding it out to Aang.

It was a flower, with velvety petals and a golden-green stem. Aang gazed at the distinctive trefoil shape of the leaves and tried to remember.

“They grow all over the cliffs. I don’t think there’s any way to pick them, though, unless you have a trusty boomerang.”

“Or Airbending,” Aang said. “The nuns here used to pick them and decorate the temple for festivals.” He touched the edge of the flower lightly. “They blossom year-round. I wish I could remember what they’re called.” Sokka started to frown, probably worried that the trick had backfired, so Aang smiled. “But that’s a really great way to pick flowers. If Suki was here, she would be impressed.”

Sokka blushed. “Neat, right?” he said, grinning, his arm still around Aang’s shoulders.

“It was,” Aang said. “Thanks, Sokka.”

“You know I like to show-off.”

That was true, but Aang also knew that Sokka wasn’t as oblivious as he pretended to be, and that even if he wasn’t the best at noticing the moods of his friends, he seemed to have a knack for doing something about them that the others didn’t share. Even though Aang knew nothing had changed and their situation was still close to hopeless and his friends were still keeping some big secret, he did _feel_ better.

“You can show off your boomerang tricks to me any time,” he said, and Sokka’s grin widened.

“My friend, you are going to regret that.”

***

Toph picked up the delicate instrument, fingers instantly feeling stiff and clumsy in a way that reminded her of the music chamber off her mother’s second favorite sitting room on the Beifong estate. The instructor her mother had brought in to teach the flute had spoken with a hushed voice and her gown had whispered delicately with her movements, while Toph’s mother had despaired of words like “hushed” and “delicate” ever being applied to anything her daughter did. 

_Which you are fine with_ , Toph reminded herself. _Those words are for other types of people who aren’t the Greatest Earthbending Master Of All Time (Fine, Minus Kyoshi). But this is for Twinkle-Toes so you can suck it up._ She raised the instrument to her lips, took a breath, and blew.

The resulting sound sent several birds shooting off the cliff-wall beside her, squawking protests as they went.

“Ouch.” Toph had known that Katara was approaching, feeling her coming up through the levels of dense rock that made up the temple - light steps, flowing movements like a river smoothing away a rock’s imperfections, Waterbender steps and so completely unique to Katara in Toph’s experience - but she hadn’t realized the other girl was so close. “That didn’t sound too great.”

Toph made herself not take offense, since Katara probably meant that to be sympathetic. “No,” she said. “I told you, it’s been a really long time since I took lessons.”

She could hear the smile in Katara’s voice as she took a seat. Probably Katara thought she wouldn’t notice the expression; Toph had realized that her friends thought she got everything she perceived through Earthbending and totally missed the other ways they gave themselves away. “You aren’t even thirteen,” Katara said. “How long ago could it have been?”

“Proper ladies start flute lessons at five.”

“Huh.” That time it was the earth that transmitted Katara’s startled reaction, minute shifts in her body language running vibrations across Toph’s feet. “When I was five I helped skin my first seal.”

Toph worked hard to make the others think she was capable of anything, so she supposed it wasn’t their faults that occasionally the stories they told made her feel every year she’d wasted as her parents’ pampered princess. Sokka and Katara had grown up learning how to survive in a harsh environment. Zuko had his own ship and command of soldiers when he was thirteen. Even the Earth Kingdom boys, Haru and Teo and the Duke, had useful skills. Toph? She was just - 

_The Greatest Earthbending Master of All Time (Minus Kyoshi and Okay, Fine, Maybe Some Other Earth Kingdom Avatars, Relax Aang.)_

“How’s the cooking coming?” she asked, with maybe a little more asperity than was necessary, but Katara didn’t seem to notice.

“Better since Haru took over the baking,” she admitted. “Turns out some Earth Kingdomers actually learned how to make all those treats you’re famous for and not just eat them.”

Toph shrugged. “I got the important part down.”

“I think I can handle everything else. The recipe scroll we found has a surprising amount of detail.” She nodded, a slight shift through the earth. “What about the music?”

“Well, I suck, but he’s doing alright.” Toph pointed off across the hall to where Zuko was standing, a complex horn in his hands and a scowl on his face. Toph couldn’t sense the scowl at this distance, of course; she just assumed, because Zuko. “When he can get over himself and stop muttering about wasting time when he’s supposed to be chasing his honor, he sounds pretty good.”

“Who knew the Fire Lord made his children take tsungi horn lessons,” Katara said. “Or maybe it was his mother.”

There was a faintly sad note in her voice that Toph had no interest in pursuing. Other people could be sad about tragedies in the past; Toph was a believer in moving forward. “Well, so did mine, and that did us no good, but I’ll keep trying,” she said. 

Katara’s hand settled on her shoulder, warm and reassuring. “You’ll be great, Toph, I know it,” she said. “You’re doing it for Aang.”

“Yeah, yeah, Twinkle-Toes is gonna owe me.”

***

“Maybe they’re building a new weapon,” Aang said, out loud. There was no point trying to be quiet, when there was no one around anyway. There was never anyone around these days, except when Sokka popped up with more boomerang tricks. “Something like what the mechanists used on the Day of Black Sun, but even bigger and better. Something that could help us get to the Fire Lord without screwing up.” He sighed, scratching Momo’s fur. “And maybe they don’t want me to know about it because I might be disappointed if it doesn’t work?”

That didn’t make sense, though. When inventions failed, it was Sokka who was disappointed, because they were usually his inventions. Aang thought they were cool and all, but he preferred more of a “winging-it” approach to a fight.

“Maybe they’re making a new oven, so we can have better food.” Momo’s ears perked up at that - no matter what the others said, Aang was sure he understood them, and he definitely understood “food.” “But I don’t dare ask Katara about that. I don’t want to get drowned.”

“Or maybe,” he admitted, “it really is about strategy and they don’t want to tell me because - “ _Because I messed up and didn’t kill the Fire Lord. Because when we first got here I tried to have fun and forget about having to kill the Fire Lord, so now they don’t take me seriously. Because maybe I don’t want to ki -_

“Hey, Aang.”

Aang twisted around to look up from his position just off the edge of the courtyard with Momo on his lap. “Hi Toph. What are you doing?”

“Looking for you. Which took forever, since you’re floating in mid-air.”

Oh, right. Aang bent the air to float himself back to the temple ground and settled his feet firmly on the floor, watching the slight frown on Toph’s face smooth as she sensed his landing. “Sorry.”

“No big deal. It was easy enough to track you down once you started talking to yourself.”

“I was talking to Momo!”

“Keep telling yourself that.” Toph brushed off his further protests. “Do you want to see something neat?”

“Sure.” At this point, Aang would take seeing anything that would relieve the boredom. He would take a hundred boomerang tricks.

Toph had something a little bigger in mind. She led him on a convoluted path through the Temple, confidently following a route Aang hadn’t even known was there. “Don’t worry, I didn’t dig out any of these tunnels, just cleared them,” she said. 

“I didn’t think you had.” Aang frowned around them. “I didn’t even know the Temple was this big.”

“It’s pretty amazing. There’s a lot more that partially collapsed and we haven’t cleared out yet. I can feel it going halfway down the canyon.” Toph gave him a half-smile. “You Air Nomads might not be Earthbenders, but you don’t totally suck at building stuff.”

“Thanks,” Aang said, resisting the urge to point out that it was didn’t. _Didn’t suck at building._ “But actually, we - they - brought in Earthbenders to do most of the construction.”

“Ha, I knew it! Smart monks.”

They eventually wound up in a wide stone room with a smooth floor and no furniture. Aang at first thought that this was the famous echo chamber, but it didn’t make any deafening sounds in response to their voices. “It’s a room for parties,” Toph explained. “Or that’s what Sokka said anyway. He read it in some old scroll.”

“He’s been doing that a lot lately, hasn’t he?” 

Toph shrugged. “I guess, but who cares? That’s not why I brought you down here. Watch this.” She walked across the room to the far end and turned back to face him, squaring her body language and planting her feet. “Ready?” She stomped down hard, and a huge ball of earth formed up out of the ground and rumbled across the room straight at him. Aang shot up in the air, barely avoiding being crushed. “Yeah, I score!” Toph yelled over a resounding crash.

“You what?” Aang lowered himself to the ground and looked over his shoulder. Toph’s boulder had hit the far wall and shattered. “What was that?”

“My score,” Toph said. “Now, you try.”

“… Okay.” Aang took up his Earthbending position - he never managed to get himself settled quite like Toph did, but he’d improved - and closed his eyes, shifting his attention from the Airbending that came most naturally to the more recently-achieved awareness of earth. “Ready?” He stomped his foot, bending the earth, pulling it up and forming it into a ball, then with a flick of his toes sent it rolling. It wasn’t as big as Toph’s boulder had been, and before it was halfway across the room, Toph gave a negligent kick and a wall sprang up to stop it. 

“Aw, too bad,” she said. “No score for you.”

“This is a game?” Aang asked, beginning to catch on. 

“Duh.” Toph grinned. “You score if you make your ball hit the far wall, and you can block however you want. Lose points if you get run over, but no Airbending to get out of that, okay?”

Aang started to smile. “Alright.”

They played Toph’s new game for almost an hour, and Aang got in a few points, but Toph still emerged the winner. Aang was grinning by the time they finished, though. “That was fun,” he said. “We haven’t played any games like that in a long time.”

“You mean I haven’t had the chance to kick your butt in a long time,” Toph said. 

“Sure. Everyone just seems so focused and busy these days.” He gave her a suspicious look, though he couldn’t bring himself to be too worried about it after the afternoon they’d had. “What have you been doing anyway?”

She scowled. “Nothing fun, and I’m not allowed to tell you.” Her face lit up. “But hey, if you want to sneak off and play boulder-bash again sometime, just let me know.”

“Boulder-bash? Sure.” He thought about asking what “not allowed to tell” meant, then decided he was in a good mood and didn’t want to ruin it. “But next time, I’ll win.”

“Not happening, Twinkle-Toes.” Toph gave a wave and ran out of the room, calling back over her shoulder, “Greatest Earthbending Master of All Time, and that includes Kyoshi!”

***

“Turn the schematic the other way. No the _other_ way. Other, other way.”

“Sokka,” Toph snapped. “How many times do I have to tell you that I cannot see what is on this page?”

“You don’t need to see to hold it in the right place. Just stop moving.” He grabbed her hands, ignoring the ominous rumbling of the floor beneath his feet, and adjusted them until she was holding up the plans at the right angle, then lifted his own model creation up to compare them. “I think I’ve got it right,” he announced.

“Yay.” Toph dropped the scroll with the plans to the table with an exaggerated sigh. “Can I go now?”

“Well, all that’s left is to pick out the colors,” she tilted her head in an exasperated expression, “which, I get, is not playing to your strengths. So yes, you are free to go. Have fun practicing the flute!”

“Be glad I don’t just make this whole tunnel collapse on your head,” she called back as she ran off.

Sokka grinned at Teo and the Duke, who were working at the other table. “That’s a joke,” he said. “Mostly a joke. I think.” He set his model down and wandered over to look at theirs. The Duke had barely managed to follow the instructions, but his would suffice, and Teo’s - “Whoa,” Sokka said. “Did you make your wings bendable?”

“Like a real bird,” Teo said. “It’s basically the same technology my dad used for our gliders back home.” He bit his lip. “Do you think Aang will mind?”

“That you made it awesome? Why would he?” Sokka knelt down to get a better look at Teo’s creation. Maybe he had time for a few modifications to his own, or he could talk Katara into letting him build hers since she was so busy with the food… 

“I don’t know.” Teo looked thoughtful. “When he first saw what we’d done to the Northern Air Temple, he was pretty angry.”

 _Understatement_ , Sokka thought. “But he got over it, and he was really appreciative of your dad coming to help us on the Day of Black Sun. After that I’m pretty sure he isn’t going to hold a grudge.”

“Yeah. I never wanted to disrespect the Air Nomads.”

“I know.” Sokka studied the contraption on the table thoughtfully. “Katara wants us to make this whole thing as close to traditional as possible.”

“So you’re saying I shouldn’t change it?”

“No. I’m saying, I don’t think what she wants _is_ actually possible.” Sokka tapped the light-weight materials with one hands. “The Air Nomads used bending in everything. And none of us are Airbenders. Some of us aren’t benders at all.” He gave Teo a reassuring smile. “Your glider technology is the closest thing we have to Airbending. Katara will appreciate that. So will Aang.”

Teo sighed. “Good. I really want this to be fun for him.”

“We all do. That’s why we’re working so hard.” Sokka got up and returned to his table. “I mean, a little so Katara won’t yell at us. But mostly the Aang thing.”

***

The one distraction Aang had these days was Firebending. Technically he was still training with all of the elements, but Katara and Toph had both declared him a master in their disciplines, so when he met with them it was just to run through the forms they all needed to remain strong in. When he trained with Zuko, it was more of a challenge. Even if they were both starting over with a new attitude towards Firebending, Zukio had years of practice in the intricacies of the forms and understanding the uses of fire in combat. It was apparently a lot more complicated than just “burn stuff”; Zuko got into long lectures on the beauty of Firebending as an art form, peppered with supposedly-profound proverbs that he didn’t seem to actually understand and Aang suspected came from his uncle. Katara and Toph had been winging it when they taught him, but Zuko had the benefit of real training, and he was determined to pass on half his life’s worth of lessons to Aang in the next month, and was impatient that Aang absorb it all and not get distracted.

Or at least, he did all that when he could be bothered to show up for those lessons.

“This is getting ridiculous,” Aang muttered to himself as he climbed another set of stairs, winding his way up the cliff. “It was one thing when everyone was just disappearing on their own time, but you make an appointment and then you don’t show up? Come on!” 

He stomped out onto one of the balconeys peering out into the chasm below. He’d been checking every room and corner of the temple he could find, looking for the Fire Prince, but at this point he half-expected that his friends had all hopped on Appa and taken off for the day without telling him. So he almost missed Zuko, sitting on the edge of the balcony with his legs dangling off the side, staring out east and south towards the sea.

“What are you doing?” he asked. “You were supposed to… Zuko?” His irritation faded as he noticed the distracted look on Zuko’s face. “What’s going on?”

The older boy looked up, his mouth tilting crookedly in the expression that was as close as he usually got to a smile. “Come here,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

Aang went to sit down next to him. Up this high, the constant swirl of air currents through the temple’s carvings was gentler, less trapped by the high cliff walls, and it fluttered lightly through their clothes and Zuko’s hair, tingling over the sensitive skin on Aang’s scalp. Aang closed his eyes and let himself feel the currents curve naturally around them, pushing at them with the lightest possible touch, not really bending but just playing with them like he had when he was a kid first learning to touch air. He’d made himself become accustomed to water and earth and he was getting there with fire, but air would always be the discipline that came most naturally, that he felt he could use in his sleep, and the Air Temples had been built for airbending. He breathed in deeply, letting the currents ease some of the tension in his body, relaxing him and opening him to the flows of energy.

Zuko, he guessed, hadn’t come up here to feel the air currents. And when he opened his eyes and looked out at the sea, and the distant blur of green islands floating in it, he could guess why he had come.

“Are those Fire Nation islands?” he asked, even though the answer was obvious. Everything within sight was Fire Nation; the Fire Lords had made sure of it. Even the land they were standing on was probably, technically, part of the Fire Nation now, though they hadn’t bothered to station their armies here since… well, since there was no one left.

“Yeah,” Zuko said quietly. “Not ones I ever spent much time on. You can’t see the capital or anything from here. But yeah, that’s the Fire Nation.” Aang couldn’t tell if he said it with pride or sadness.

Aang nodded, but Zuko didn’t contribute anything else. They sat silently for a few more minutes before Aang began to get restless. Monk Gyatso always said he’d never fully mastered patience. “Why did you want to show them to me?”

“It’s strange,” Zuko said, “that it’s so close. It feels like I’ve traveled a million miles since I walked away from my father, but really, it would take us, what, two days to get back there on Appa?”

“About that, if we didn’t make him carry too many people,” Aang said. He didn’t think Zuko was really asking about taking a trip. 

“I was thinking,” Zuko said, “that if I went home, even though it would be the same place, and I wouldn’t have to go far, that it would be different, because _I’m_ different. And that’s good, that’s how it’s supposed to be. Even if your family isn’t - “

“- evil Firebending overlords?”

“- that, you’re still supposed to leave them and change and then come back and find your home the same. A measuring rod for your changes.” He paused. “At least, that sounds like something my uncle would say. Though he would probably work in a metaphor about tea.”

Zuko talked about his uncle a lot, but never in any depth. Aang didn’t actually know what had happened to General Iroh, though he could tell that Zuko felt guilty about whatever it was. But whenever he brought his uncle up, it wasn’t to talk about recent events, it was to tell them a story about something Iroh had taught him, and Aang got the feeling that Zuko felt he never really conveyed what Iroh was like successfully.

Aang could understand that. He remembered trying to tell Katara and Sokka stories about Monk Gyatso when they visited the Southern Air Temple, and how afterwards he’d thought that his friends now understood that the senior monk had been wise and slyly funny, but not what he’d meant to Aang. Aang hadn’t had the words to explain that part.

How did you convey a whole person in just words when they weren’t there?

“You’ll get to go back,” he said to Zuko, leaving aside anything about Iroh since he wasn’t sure if a reunion there was actually possible. 

“I know.” Zuko finally turned to him, gold eyes serious. “But I was also thinking, it’s the opposite for you, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“You didn’t change. You just left and when you came back, your home had turned into something different.”

Aang had to turn away and look out at the sea again for a moment, to catch his breath against the sudden tightness in his throat. “Uh, yeah,” he said, when he could. “That’s… that’s interesting, I guess. As a comparison.”

There was a moment of silence, and when Zuko spoke again, the thoughtful musing had been replaced with the awkward tones he’d used when he’d first come to join their group. “I didn’t mean - I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to upset you. I just thought - god, I suck at this.” The last part was muttered under his breath, probably not intended for Aang’s ears.

“You don’t suck,” he said anyway. “I’m just not sure what you’re trying to say.”

“Just that - “ Zuko raked his hands back through his hair, tugging at it, and sighed. “Your friends want you to be happy,” he said. “Because they care about you. They talk about that a lot. And that’s good. I mean, I think. I’ve never really… Well, anyway, it’s good that they want you to be happy, but maybe that isn’t always possible. Or what you need. Or want. Because of,” he waved a hand vaguely at the Temple around them, “all this. There’s nothing I can really say about that - “

“You don’t have to apologize for what your ancestors did, Zuko,” Aang said quickly.

“Well, _they_ aren’t going to,” Zuko pointed out. “And no, I know that. I couldn’t - that would be absurd. It’s too much.” He frowned, meeting Aang’s eyes again. “I just meant, if sometimes you didn’t want to be happy, for your friends, but you didn’t want to be alone, that I could - “ He shrugged a little helplessly, apparently giving up on words and just hoping Aang could make sense out of what he’d given him. “Sometimes I’m not a cheerful guy either.”

Aang burst out laughing.

Nothing had struck him as funny this way in weeks, and it caught him off-guard. He collapsed in giggles, gasping for breath, and each time he looked over and saw Zuko staring at him, bewildered and maybe a little horrified, it got worse.

“Not - not that - not that ch-cheerful,” he choked out helplessly. 

Zuko sighed. “Alright, I get it, hilarious.” He moved like he was about to stand. “I’ll just go - “

“No, no, wait.” Aang got himself under control and grabbed at the taller boy’s arm, Zuko freezing under his touch. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh at you. It was just - your face, and saying you’re ‘not that cheerful’ - “ He took a deep breath, feeling the easy flow of air currents through his body, now fully relaxed. “That felt really good. I needed that laugh. Thanks, Zuko.”

“…You’re welcome?” Zuko still looked unsure, but he sat down again anyway, gracefully easing himself out from under Aang’s touch. 

Aang sat up again, laughter fading. “Thank you for the rest, too,” he said. “My friends do want me to be happy, I know that, and most of the time that’s good. I’d rather play a game or make a joke than brood about the past, you know?” 

“No,” Zuko said. “That’s all I do.” Aang stared at him, and he rolled his eyes. “That was a joke.”

“Oh. Hah. That was a funny one too.” Aang glanced off across the canyon towards the sea again. “Sometimes, though,” he said, “I just want to be quiet. And I don’t think the others understand that. It gets them nervous.”

Zuko nodded. “I’m the same way.”

They sat for several minutes, Aang breathing with meditative slowness and thinking about the silence all around them, the profound emptiness of the Temple. Zuko stared at the distant islands of the Fire Nation again, and Aang wasn’t sure what he was thinking. He thought about asking, but instead after a moment he said, “Did I ever tell you about Monk Gyatso?”

Zuko looked up from his reverie, blinking slowly. “No,” he said. “But if you want to, I’d like to hear about him.”

***

“Okay, I’ve got the light, so everyone stay behind me,” Zuko said, holding up one hand with his palm cupped around a small, flickering flame.

Katara bit back a flicker of annoyance, the same one she always felt when Zuko was right about something. As if it wasn’t enough that Zuko was proving to be a good Firebending teacher for Aang ( _which he needs_ , she reminded herself) and hadn’t betrayed them all to the Fire Lord ( _which would be bad_ , she also remembered), he had to go and be helpful with their plans. He’d done everything she asked of him without complaint, which she really couldn’t say about Sokka and definitely not about Toph, and he’d been willing to distract Aang when they needed to work on something that couldn’t easily be hidden. She had no idea where they went when it was Zuko’s turn on Aang-duty, but wherever it was, Aang had never caught them. Zuko had even had a few good plans about the construction of torches and flying implements; apparently he’d been more than just the face of the Fire Nation, he’d understood their technology. And all that was… great. Just great.

She scowled at his back, but when he turned in her direction, she nodded. “Right. Everyone follow Zuko, and remember to stay quiet. We don’t want Aang finding out what we’re doing.”

They moved off in a quiet procession, just Zuko, Toph, Haru and Katara. Sokka had stayed behind with Teo and the Duke in case Aang woke up and got suspicious, but Katara was pretty sure they were safe. Aang had always slept like the dead, and he’d been tired since the Day of Black Sun.

She sent a worried look back at the campfire and the sleeping forms around it, Aang just a tiny yellow-and-red blur against Appa’s fur. _I hope he isn’t too angry when he finds out_ , Katara thought, then reminded herself, _surprises are fun_. 

And if anyone deserved some fun, it was Aang.

Zuko led them down the first flight of stairs, then around a corner and across a bridge to a second part of the Temple. This one had taken more damage from the Fire Nation attacks a century ago, but Toph and Haru had been slowly clearing the damage, one small bit at a time so Aang wouldn’t sense the vibrations and wonder what they were doing. Now it was time for the last big push.

They reached the collapsed doors that led into the big hall. Katara had assumed they were just going to move them, like clearing a damn, but Toph had explained that if they did that, the pillars around them would also collapse. “No, I’ll just dig a new door,” she’d said, like that was obvious. 

Actually, though, it was Haru who was going to clear the door. He got into position and nodded to Toph, who sighed as she set herself up a few feet away. “All of this wouldn’t be necessary if we just used the boulder-bash room I found,” she grumbled.

“That’s not a real game,” Katara said. “And no. The scrolls said this was where they did it.”

“Is too,” Toph muttered, but she squared her shoulders. “Okay, Haru, let’s see what you can do.”

The other Earthbender stepped through his forms and kicked, a crack forming in a wall just beside the old door. Another kick and it began to widen. The sound was awful, but they should be far enough away for Aang to sleep through it, and Toph, though she looked like she was just standing there, was directing the vibrations from Haru’s bending away from their sleeping companions so Aang wouldn’t notice.

Still, it was a lot of noise.

“She has a point,” Zuko said, his rough voice soft a few inches away from her ear. Katara had stopped jumping every time he spoke since he’d started helping. “We could have used the other room.”

“No,” Katara said. “I want to be the same as it was. Exactly the same. Or, as close as we can make it, anyway, with only eight people.” She glanced at the fire in his hands. “And with only one Airbender.” 

The Airbenders had lit their torches with flint and then used air to keep them going. Between Zuko and Aang, they wouldn’t even need that much.

“I don’t think it has to be perfect,” Zuko started to say, and Katara snapped.

“It does! That’s the whole point. We’re going to give Aang something that’s been missing for him for the last year.” Zuko just blinked at her in the dim light, and Katara felt herself flushing. “Sorry,” she said. “I just really want this to be nice for him.”

“I know.” Zuko’s voice was very quiet. “And I think it’s beautiful. Just don’t make yourself crazy with the details. It's enough that you’re giving him a little bit of home.”

 _Home_ , Katara thought. She wondered how many special days she’d missed among the Water Tribe since she’d left home. She’d counted them in the beginning, but that had gotten too depressing. 

_But not as many as Aang,_ she thought, and straightened her back. They were going to give him this one, though, and it would be perfect.

***

Katara was the hardest of the group to track down, which Aang found strange, considering most of the time she wouldn’t leave him alone, always fussing over whether he was eating enough or sleeping enough or if he wanted to talk about feelings. Aang might have been more interested if she’d wanted to talk about the feelings _he_ wanted to talk about, but Katara was more into how Aang felt about the Fire Lord and how thoroughly they’d (he’d) failed to defeat him, and Aang didn’t like those talks as much. But once Katara started avoiding him, it felt strange. Like a piece of him was missing. He was just so used to her being there, he felt cold when she disappeared. He’d decided, after his talk with Zuko the other day, that he was going to leave his friends to their scheming and wait for them to come to him, because Zuko was right, they did want him to be happy, and he should trust that whatever they were doing was for that reason. But when it came to Katara… well. He missed her. So he went looking.

When he finally tracked her down, she was in a small room down the same corridor where Aang had run into Sokka and Toph acting so bizarre a few days earlier. It had occurred to Aang that whatever secret “strategy” they were up to, it probably involved all those scrolls, and maybe if he tried this part of the Temple he’d find out what they were about. So he’d spent some time wandering around, passing a lot of unused storage closets and guest chambers, and then he’d found a tiny but beautifully decorated room, and Katara inside it, kneeling over yet another scroll laid out on a low desk.

She jumped, guiltily, when Aang entered, but that was no surprise. Aang had grown very used to that reaction over the last few days.

“Nice place,” he said. “Is this the room you guys discovered when I was away with Zuko?”

“What? Oh, yes.” Katara looked uneasy, but she still gave him the same smile she always did, the one that made him think… well, anyway, the same smile. “We think it’s a library.”

It was a good guess, but Aang shook his head. “It’s an office,” he said. “It would have belonged to the head nun. That’s what we called the female monks.” He traced his hand along a set of drawers built into a cabinet, tiny ones made to house scrolls. “She would have done business in here, and kept her personal papers and the records for the Temple. I think these must be the ones that belonged to the last of the nuns, before…” 

His voice trailed off. He supposed he’d been wrong in his guess; he couldn’t imagine what interest Sokka and the other would have in the private papers of a long-dead woman.

“That explains it,” Katara muttered; when Aang turned back, she shook her head. “Just, some of the things we found…You know what? Later. How are you doing?”

There it was, that concerned expression that simultaneously made him feel warm inside and wonder if Katara would always think of him as just a kid. “I’m fine,” he said. His eyes drifted back to the shelves. “There’s a lot of information here. I guess it’s all just administrative stuff, probably. Records for the food they bought and which parts of the Temple needed repairs.” He felt a weird urge to pull all the scrolls out anyway and read them. Every nation had their own quirks of writing and speech, their own turns of phrase. He hadn’t read anything that sounded _Air Nomad_ to him in almost a year. 

“Some of it,” Katara said. “But there’s a lot here that’s more interesting. History and traditions, calendars, lists of, um, of celebrations. Genealogies. All kinds of stuff.” She trailed off as he turned to stare at her. “What?”

“You’ve been disappearing all week because you’ve been reading?”

She laughed. “No, no, that’s - “ She sighed. “I’m sorry, Aang. I didn’t mean to disappear on you. I’ve just been busy.”

“You’ve all been busy,” he accused. “With a secret.”

He expected her to deny it, and that maybe he’d have to break out the look where he made his eyes really big and she caved in, so he was surprised when her shoulders slumped. “Yes,” she said. “But it’s not - “

“It’s okay.” He grinned at the surprised expression on her face. “I trust you guys.” She started to relax. “I mean, I didn’t at first, but then I realized, you guys wouldn’t keep a secret from me if you didn’t have a really good reason. Like a really, _really_ good one. So I’m not suspicious anymore.”

“You aren’t?” She looked relieved. “The others thought maybe you were getting angry, and I never wanted that, I just - “

“You have a good reason?”

She nodded fervently. “We do.”

“That’s fine then.” Especially since it didn’t seem like he was going to be able to guilt her into explaining. _Trust them_ , he reminded himself. “Even if it’s _very_ annoying.”

“I’m sure it is.” She smiled a little, though, and he smiled back.

“You’re really not going to tell me.”

She shook her head. “Not unless it’s bothering you that much. It’s nothing bad, Aang. Actually, it’s, um, well, I hope anyway - ” She looked like she might be blushing. “I hope you’re going to love it when we do tell you.”

“Alright. Keep your secret.” He turned back to the shelves of scrolls and tablets, the little glass curio case of tiny figurines, all of it covered in layers of dust and sand from the canyon floor. He could almost smell the distant scent of wax and incense that had filled Monk Gyatsu’s similar office on the other side of the world, but the century of open air and abandonment overlaid it. His disappointment that she wouldn’t tell him what was going on faded in importance. “I wish I knew what all this was,” he said. “There’s so much, probably none of it really important, and now there’s no one to care about it.” 

“Of course there is.” He didn’t hear her move, just the shift of air as she got up and came closer, putting an arm around his shoulders. Immediately something that had felt like it was missing slotted back into place. He leaned back against her, absently noting that the difference in their heights was less than it had been a year ago. “When this is all over,” she said, “we’ll come back here. And we’ll gather it all and we’ll, I don’t know, we’ll catalogue it. Read it all and make sure it’s preserved. We’ll make sure none of it gets lost. Even the boring stuff.”

“Turn it into history.”

“I guess.” She turned her head, her hair brushing the side of his face. “But a living history, Aang. You’ll get to teach it all to people.”

That part didn’t sound so bad. “You really think you’ll want to do that? Help with all that?” 

“If it makes you happy, yes.”

Aang smiled, his throat tight with dust or affection. “Thanks, Katara.”

***

Appa was almost asleep when he felt the shifting wind and opened one eye to see Aang creeping across the open courtyard where the children had set up their sleeping mats. Unlike the night before, they were all on them, except for Aang. The boy made little noise, but Appa had ears the size of a human's entire body and he didn’t miss much. He grunted happily when Aang climbed up into his fur and settled down.

“They’re planning something,” Aang whispered. “I thought it meant they didn’t trust me but now… now I think maybe it’s something different. Something good. I could be wrong though.” He squirmed around, a tiny weight against Appa’s side, getting comfortable. The sky bison closed his eyes again and drifted towards sleep. “It’s too quiet here, you know?” Aang said. “Even though the monks and nuns never talked a lot, you could always feel their presence. Now it’s empty.” There was a slight tug on Appa’s fur, a boy’s first settling into the grip that Aang had kept on him whenever he fell asleep as a much younger child, a century ago. Appa twitched his ear until it fell over Aang's body like a heavy, hairy blanket. 

“I’m glad we didn’t come here alone,” Aang said. “It’s nice to have other people. Even if they are plotting against me.”

***

“Surprise!”

Aang’s eyes flew open, and he’d bent the air above Appa’s slumbering form before he realized what he was doing, shooting up on a spinning cloud. When he looked down, his friends were all staring up at him. 

“Uh, sorry,” he said, lowering himself back to his feet. “Did you guys say something?” Behind him, he heard Appa waking up, disgruntled at the noise. Appa wasn’t a morning person, or bison.

“Told you we shouldn’t have startled him,” Sokka said. “He’s been jumpy ever since… you know what, who cares! Happy Festival Day friend!”

“Festival Day?” Aang’s brain was beginning to wake up, enough to notice that it was all of his friends, even Haru and Teo and the Duke, standing in a semi-circle beside Appa, and that they were carrying unlit torches and some sort of folded-up pieces of cloth. Katara had some of those little blue flowers in her hair - Aang couldn’t help noticing that they matched her eyes - and Sokka had one sticking up from his topknot. “What’s going on guys?”

There was some shifting around as his friends all looked at each other before silently electing Katara to speak for them. “We’re celebrating a festival,” she said. “We don’t actually know what it’s called, but we know it was celebrated at this time of year.” When he didn’t respond, her smile faltered. “It’s a traditional festival in the Air Nomad Temples - “

“I know what it is,” Aang said, staring between them, bewildered. Well, he knew the Festival anyway; he hadn’t really been paying much attention to the date, aside from the always present awareness of how close they were to the end of summer. “How do _you_ know?”

“Research,” Sokka said. “Mine, mostly.”

“He tripped over some dusty old scrolls while trying to find out if the Air Nomads had left a stash of air-dried snacks,” Zuko clarified.

“And then I _read_ them, which was a lot of work.”

“I don’t know why you think it’s impressive that you can read.”

Katara rolled her eyes at their bickering. “It was that office we were in the other day. Sokka found it - yes, Sokka, good job - and then we all started poking around. We found a lot of writing about the traditions of the Air Temples and arrangements made for celebrations. And we saw that there was one that was normally celebrated at this time of year.” Her confident expression was wavering, but she hung on. “I mean, we think it was? There were records of extra food, and traditional recipes and schematics for kites and the order of a procession and decoration plans. All of it. We figured it must have been important to your people. To you.” 

She gave a little smile, unsure. It was strange seeing Katara like this, when she was usually the one most sure she was doing the right thing.

“Oh. Right, yes.” He knew the Festival she was talking about; the Air Nomads had a lot of them and Aang had enjoyed all of them, thought the summer festivals tended to be smaller and less exciting. “So… I’m sorry, I still don’t get it.”

“So, we’re throwing it. For you. Duh.” Sokka stepped forward and clapped Aang on the shoulder. “Happy party day, friend! Now can we get to the food? Haru can bake.”

“Katara did most of the work,” Haru said modestly.

“Not the baking she didn’t, and that’s a good thing, because we all need to live to defeat the Fire Lo - ow!”

“Aang, I hope this is okay,” Katara said, her expression sincere, as though she hadn’t just sent a dagger of ice from her water canister to stab Sokka’s ear. She came closer and lowered her voice, so only he could hear. “You’ve been sad, ever since we got here, and I just thought… I didn’t mean to make it into a big secret. I just wanted to surprise you. So,” she shrugged, “surprise?”

“We have food, and we made kites that will turn and dip on their own, just like if Airbenders were flying them, and there’s music for a procession,” Sokka said. “All according to tradition. Or,” he added, with a slight look in Toph’s direction, “as close as we can get it.”

“If my flute playing is actually any good, please don’t tell my mother,” Toph said.

“We cleared a hall across that bridge to the south,” Zuko added. “According to the scrolls, that’s where the festival was held.”

“And we decorated it with those flowers I showed you,” Sokka said. “Which, I might add, I cut down one at a time with my boomerang. My arm is tired now, so, you’re welcome.”

“I told you I’d just knock a chunk off the cliff-face - “

“And I told you I don’t trust you knocking apart bits of the Temple we’re living in.”

“Aang, please say something.”

Aang looked up into Katara’s worried, hopeful eyes, then around at the rest of the group. “I’m… yeah. I’m more than okay with this.” He felt himself grinning, some weight lifting from his chest. “You guys did this for me? I really thought you were plotting war strategies behind my back and didn’t want to tell me.”

“No way, man,” Sokka said. “Although Teo did have this cool idea for a - “

“Festival day, Sokka,” Katara said firmly, then turned back to Aang. “Today is a day we are going to have fun. We’ll do a procession, though you have to tell us where it’s supposed to go, and then we’ll eat traditional Air Nomad food, or the closest approximation we could manage, and Toph and Zuko will give us some traditional Air Nomad music and we’ll dance and,” she shrugged. “We’ll have fun. For one day, anyway.”

Aang looked around at his group of friends, all of them nervous beneath their grins and cheerful bickering. He supposed that the Temple records wouldn’t have marked how minor this festival was, or that it was mostly restricted to this one Temple, or that half of the “traditions” associated with it had only sprung up in the year or two before Aang disappeared. 

He also thought he really didn’t care, after his friends had spent weeks plotting behind his back just to give him a party. 

“Okay.” Aang grabbed Katara’s hand, reaching for Sokka with the other one. “Then let’s go have a festival!”


End file.
